1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to documents having secure barcodes and systems and methods for producing these documents. In particular, the present invention relates to documents having a fluorescent barcode that is further protected from forgery by security features, in addition to the fluorescence.
2. Description of Related Art
Barcodes have been used for labeling and identifying objects for many years. Until recently, barcodes were one dimensional, having only vertical lines of variable widths and spacing therebetween. For a long time, these barcodes could only be read by barcode readers and were thus fairly secure from unauthorized reading and forgeries. As optical and computing technology became more advanced, more devices (such as smartphones and printer/scanner systems) became capable of reading and interpreting barcodes.
Around the same time, two dimensional barcodes began appearing. Two dimensional barcodes can contain a greater amount of data than one dimensional barcodes, due to the greater number of representations possible in two dimensions. Two dimensional barcodes are now used for many purposes, in addition to the original use of labeling and identifying objects, such as advertising and document security.
One example of such document security includes printing a barcode on a document using fluorescent ink or toner (fluorescent ink). The fluorescent ink fluoresces when illuminated by light of a particular wavelength, such as ultraviolet or infrared, and is colorless when illuminated by normal lighting. Because the ink is colorless in daylight, for example, a counterfeiter may not realize that a fluorescent barcode exists on an original document. A forgery will, thus, be easy to identify, due to the lack of the fluorescence in the barcode. Ultraviolet barcodes may also include information that is not displayed in visible ink on the document. For example, character strings, website addresses, etc. can be represented by a barcode. Thus, even if the document is stolen, the information represented by the barcode may be secure.
As fluorescent barcodes have increased in popularity, so has the knowledge of their existence. Due to the increased awareness that documents may include fluorescent barcodes, the security that these barcodes once provided is diminishing. In particular, any data represented by the fluorescent barcode is now relatively simple to obtain by illuminating the document with an ultraviolet or infrared light and scanning the fluorescing barcode.
Furthermore, ultraviolet inks are becoming more popular and can be purchased by the general population. Printing with these ultraviolet inks can be done using many printers by simply replacing a traditional ink cartridge with a fluorescent ink cartridge. Thus, not only is the data represented by fluorescent barcodes less secure, but counterfeiters can now more easily produce counterfeits.
For the foregoing reasons, secure fluorescent barcodes and methods and systems for making the fluorescent barcodes more secure are desirable.